Why Go To College? Why Go To Night School?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are aware that I am highly skeptical of the American higher education system. At best, it is a terribly inefficient cash grab by institutions who claim to be serving the public. At worse, it is a rigorous form of social apartheid which feeds on the fears of the elites and their desires to guarantee success for their progeny.

Either way, we can blow up this system at any point and I would not shed tear one for any tenured professor.

The Wall Street Journal, which I rode over the coals a couple of weeks ago, contains a piece by Charles Murray which I couldn't agree with more.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

Fantastic! Murray calls for a series of certification tests as a means for institutions to identify appropriate candidates, modeled on the CPA. I concur. I distinctly recall my state certification test for teaching. The test was such an absolute joke- a fact that indicted not only the state Board of Ed but the schools who provide Illinois with teachers.

To paraphrase Will Hunting, Americans spend billions of dollars collecting initials after their names which could be had for hundreds of dollars in late fines at the public library in a more perfect world.

The American University Scam

Nothing gets my goat more than American higher education. Our institutions of higher learning continue to increase their tuition and fees at an extreme rate while not interrupting their boondoggling of our youth and their parents. Want a great job for Sally? Well, Sally better go to an Ivy. Not for the education, but for the status that it will set for her. The whole practice is unseemly, and the definition of undemocratic. And unfortunately, this scam receives almost no ink from the press.

Well, The New York Times corrects that today. Some young phone fundraiser for Brown or Columbia must have really struck some reporter's nerve, or else they've decided to chase economic stories that don't involve food or gas (finally!).

In January, the Senate Finance Committee requested detailed endowment and
spending data from 136 colleges and universities with endowments of at least
$500 million, with a possible eye to forcing them to spend at least 5 percent of
their assets each year, as foundations are required to do. Large, tax-free
endowments “should mean affordable education for more students, not just a
security blanket for colleges,” said Senator Charles
E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who is reviewing the data.

Wow! You mean universities should use some of the money they raise to offset their higher costs, instead of just passing the bills to the student/consumer? What a crazy idea!

Wake up America. Today's college degree is primarily worthless unless you utilize a university's resources to find your dream job, or just want to learn a secret handshake. And even with all that, there's not much guarantee. Have your kid get a job, save their money, go to the local juco, and figure what they really want to do. Because university's breed confusion and exhaustion. That's how they keep you coming back for more degrees.

Related, a Harvard TA describes life at the square in The Times Higher Education.

Ivy Retardation

The American Scholar published an article by William Deresiewicz, a professor at Yale University, which describes the phenomenon he calls "Ivy Retardation."

We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and
everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to
give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “Oh,” when
people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard,
I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to
school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are
smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of
class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at
all.

So very true. I openly loathe the American education system. Yes, I am currently training to be a test prep instructor, thereby helping more students game the system. I am part of the problem. But I do know what the solution is. The American education system is nothing more than a guarantor of privileges of your socioeconomic class. The idea that there is any equality at all is laughable. Equal education will only arrive when teaching becomes training, when all students are given the basics towards their survival in a global market.

Yes, this would be more money for teachers, and higher taxes. But it would emphasize broad, marketable skills- reading, writing, math, and technology. The lie of American education is that anyone can be President. Maybe so, but that is not a goal. The country needs construction workers and adminstrative assistants. What the country doesn't need is failed schools and academics more in love with theory than training.

True, education is better today on a global perspective. More women and handicapped receive proper education. But, top to bottom, the American education system relies less on its primary goal (education) than on illusory social skills (phys ed, networking, adding resources, etc.).

Our empire will crumble here, not through misbegotten wars or failed environmental policies. Poor students make poor leaders.